Abstract

ABSTRACT This paper is concerned with the ontological status of linguistic types. According to a widely held view, linguistic types are abstract objects that are instantiated or represented by tokens. The same types might be tokened by both speech, signing and text. This view has implications for how we consider what it is to know a language since knowledge of language is typically taken to be knowledge of linguistic types. We argue below that linguistic types are not abstract objects but action-types and that these action-types are individuated by the capacities that they manifest. The picture that results from this view is that to know a language is to have the capacities required to perform these action-types.